During my conversation with this week's fascinating podcast guest Nifemi Aluko, I asked how he could write a book so quickly as a first-time author. He told me that he set a rule to write 15 minutes a day, no matter what twaddle appeared.
"I didn't focus on the outcome. I didn't open YouTube. I didn't answer emails," he says. "It was me, the white screen, and my keyboard."
Some days, he'd struggle to get a paragraph written; other days, he wrote a page and a half of pretty good copy. The point was to keep the practice consistent and stick with it.
Eventually, Nifemi prolonged those writing sessions to a half-hour than 45 minutes than an hour. The result is his first book, Press Play: Music as A Catalyst For Change, which chronicles his experience moving from Lago, Nigeria to Palo Alto, California to attend Stanford University and his passion for music and its impact on the world.
Nifemi's 15-minute practice made me curious about the work habits and routines of other writers. How do they (or did they) keep themselves motivated each day?
For those keeping score at home, here’s my writing routine… Oh, that’s right. I don’t have one, which is why I’m so envious of people who do.
Here are some ideas from writers you may know.
Ernest Hemingway
When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there.
You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next, and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that.
When you stop, you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you; nothing can happen; nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.
Haruki Murakami
When I'm in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m.
I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it's a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.
Maya Angelou
I usually get up at about 5:30, and I'm ready to have coffee by 6, usually with my husband. He goes off to his work around 6:30, and I go off to mine.
I keep a hotel room in which I do my work — a tiny, mean room with just a bed, and sometimes if I can find it, a face basin. I keep a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards, and a bottle of sherry in the room. I try to get there around 7, and I work until 2 in the afternoon.
If the work is going badly, I stay until 12:30. If it's going well, I'll stay as long as it's going well. It's lonely, and it's marvelous. I edit while I'm working. When I come home at 2, I read over what I've written that day and then try to put it out of my mind.
I shower, prepare dinner so that when my husband comes home, I'm not totally absorbed in my work. We have a semblance of a normal life. We have a drink together and have dinner. Maybe after dinner, I'll read to him what I've written that day. He doesn't comment. I don't invite comments from anyone but my editor, but hearing it aloud is good. Sometimes I hear the dissonance; then, I try to straighten it out in the morning.
Kurt Vonnegut
I awake at 5.30, work until 8.00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11.45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon, I do schoolwork, either teach or prepare.
Stephen King
In an interview with Game Of Thrones author, George R.R. Martin, Stephen King talked about his routine:
The way that I work, I try to get out there, and I try to get six pages a day. So, with a book like End of Watch, and … when I'm working, I work every day — three, four hours, and I try to get those six pages, and I try to get them fairly clean. So if the manuscript is, let's say, 360 pages long, that's basically two months' work. … But that's assuming it goes well.
He also talked about his morning routine.
I have a glass of water or a cup of tea. There's a certain time I sit down, from 8:00 to 8:30, somewhere within that half hour every morning," he explained. "I have my vitamin pill and my music, sit in the same seat, and the papers are all arranged in the same places…The cumulative purpose of doing these things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind, you're going to be dreaming soon.
Susan Sontag
Starting tomorrow — if not today:
I will get up every morning no later than eight. (Can break this rule once a week.)
I will have lunch only with Roger [Straus]. ('No, I don't go out for lunch.' Can break this rule once every two weeks.)
I will write in the Notebook every day. (Model: Lichtenberg's Waste Books.)
I will tell people not to call in the morning or not answer the phone.
I will try to confine my reading to the evening. (I read too much — as an escape from writing.)
I will answer letters once a week. (Friday? — I have to go to the hospital anyway.)
John Steinbeck
This according to the reliable news source, Pencils.com:
Every day, before putting graphite to paper, he would sharpen 24 pencils and place them point up in the first of two identical wood boxes. Each pencil lasted just long enough to dull its point – usually four or five lines – before being placed in the second box, point down. After all 24 pencils had progressed from one box to the other, John would resharpen each pencil, and begin the process anew. According to Thom, some days he would use over 100 pencils. But every day started with 24 pencils and the sound of the pencil sharpener.